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Every mmo has some kind of niche, or some kind of thing that it does better than other games. For some games that is some special combat system, for others it is a type of game play mechanic that makes it unique. Rift on paper looks like a game very similar to World of Warcraft with a different graphics engine. Now I am currently playing the free trial up to level 20 and am having a moderately good time. My biggest disappointment thus far has been the horrible character aesthetics during the character creation. Needless to say I am not very happy with the way my character looks, but there were no real good options for male characters to begin with imo. Anyhow I digress, what is Rift's unique feature? What is its main draw or lure that makes it different from other fantasy style mmos? What does it do better than the others?

I can't quite figure this out yet and still do not know if I will subscribe to it or not. As I said earlier, I am having a moderately good time with the game but the aesthetics are just not selling me at this point. The fact that some NPC's are nearly twice the size of my character also significantly bothers me and completely destroys any sense of immersion I would have had during the story Rift events.

I realize that I have only really played the game for 15 levels so far and have likely not seen any of the major game mechanics and distinctions at work quite yet. With that said, I would really like to understand what the game is about a bit more before I decide whether or not I will shell out my $15/mo for it.

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I played right to about 30ish, then I went back and played it again starting fresh. It still has a decent following as far as that goes, but it doesn't really do anything special. The rift system can be a lot of fun, but from my experience that is all depended on whos in the zone with you and if people are on. Towards the higher levels there is more movement etc, especially with the newer expansion.

I think what Rift does well is also what it does bad, its a decent overall game from beginning to end. However there isn't much razzle dazzle to warrant $15 a month sadly. That seems to be the case with most MMORPGs though lately, good concepts but poor executions.

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Great question and I'm not sure I have as solid of an answer as I should. I have played Rift on and off for about 6 months and it's a game that I would say is my primary MMO alt. I think that what Rift does well is provide a good number of diversions and systems to tinker with, as compared to many mainstream MMOs.

Among the biggest is the soul system and the number of roles you can swap between. Creating a build for farming, another for PvP, and still another for dungeoneering can be a lot of fun in itself, if you want to really get into it. For instance, my main is a mage and when I queue up for a dungeon I can take on any of three roles-- support, damage, healing-- and can even have different ways of handling most of those tasks.

There are also lots of other systems like dimensions, which can suck you in for hour after hour. Even if you're not a builder per se, you can still regularly burn a lot of free time exploring what other people have designed. There's the usual pet/mount collecting which can come from faction or finding artifacts, etc. There are puzzles and cairns in every zone that reward nice goodies. There's a wardrobe system that allows you to look pretty much any way that you want to, along with dyeable armors. Of course there are the rifts themselves and zone events and IAs that provide quick bursts of action and socialization if you don't feel like questing. Conquest, which allows for pseudo RvRvR action (some love it, some hate it). Chronicles for a solo/duo to tackle to slooowly get high-end gear. And on and on and on.

I never spent any serious time with WoW so I can't relate to it being a clone. If anything, the game feels a lot like EQ2 to me. The main strength of Rift in my eyes is that there really is a glut of fun things to putter around with, even if the implementation of them aren't mind-shattering. I've never regretted the money spent on a sub, even if I don't play every day, because I know when I do log in I'll have too many things I can do rather than too little.

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Now here is the thing about the soul system, its not as great as a lot of people like to think it is. It gives you the illusion that there are more options then there really are. Most of the options it gives you just don't work, there are certain builds floating around the web on what people prefer you to use for your role in a group. The new expansion has added a few new souls but the system itself still suffers from limitations that were not fully thought through.

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Originally posted by WakygreekNow here is the thing about the soul system, its not as great as a lot of people like to think it is. It gives you the illusion that there are more options then there really are. Most of the options it gives you just don't work, there are certain builds floating around the web on what people prefer you to use for your role in a group. The new expansion has added a few new souls but the system itself still suffers from limitations that were not fully thought through.

I partly agree with this. The way the souls works doesn't allow for mixing to happen as much as it could and the synergies between souls remain frustratingly more limited than they should be. Also, there are continuing problems with some souls simply being underpowered or too narrow and, thus, underused. Still, unless you're a serious raider or min-maxer, there's a lot more freedom for building and multi-speccing a character than most games offer. The fact that my mage can specialize among two pet classes, a high burst glass cannon, a melee dd, a dot-heavy slowburner, an all-AOE dd, a buffer/debuffer, and a healer (and lots of combinations between all of them), as well as switch between them on the fly, makes Rift one of the best when it comes to building a character.

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Originally posted by WakygreekNow here is the thing about the soul system, its not as great as a lot of people like to think it is. It gives you the illusion that there are more options then there really are. Most of the options it gives you just don't work, there are certain builds floating around the web on what people prefer you to use for your role in a group. The new expansion has added a few new souls but the system itself still suffers from limitations that were not fully thought through.

this.

as for what it does well? the same things WoW and EQ2 do well, as they've simply copied those things. now look at what RIFT(and TRION) do poorly(everything that they didn't xerox from blizz/SOE). class balance, RvR(lol so bad). now Defiance is riddled with as many probelms as a Funcom game.

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If I were going to play this type of mmorpg, I would consider the category of game it falls into within that broader genre. I think Rift, as you said, is a lot like WoW and maybe, SWTOR and LoTRO because it is a level-based theme park that focuses on gear progression at endgame. All four are solid, slighter older games (except SWTOR, which seems dated, but is actually pretty new). That means, they are themeparks and they don't use action combat.

All 4 of those games have a very different art style. If you don't like Rift, I don't know whether you would like your character model in the other two games. Maybe you could give us some idea of character models you do like and what kind of art style appeals to you.

There are other games, like Age of Conan and The Secret World. To me, they are basically gear grinders as well. They are quirky Funcom games. They are fun and different, and I think a bit more difficult than the aforementioned 4 games. Hence, they are also less populated. I've had good times in those games, but I'm just not into gear grinding now.

Personally, since I've put more time into WoW, if I were going to play that type of game, that's what I would stick with. I have played Rift. It was pretty much the same, but not as funny or lighthearted as WoW, so the grinding go to feel a bit depressing and heavy. Rift doesn't really have a sense of humor. But the general community was better. I was in a guild in both games and my WoW guild is great, so I don't really care about the crappy general community.

What other games have you played, OP? What are you looking for in a game?

EDIT: Regarding Defiance as mentioned in the post above, I'm having a lot of fun with that game. I don't think it reflects poorly on Trion at all. It's an interesting, fast-paced game. It's not an mmorpg, so much as an mmo shooter. It's different. I don't see it being riddled with problems. I think more detail would be needed on that point, for me to understand that criticism.

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Rift is bascally a wow clone/generic mmorpg, that does just enough diffrent to not feel like a complete copy and paste unlike most mmo's released after wow. The soul system is neat even though its not setup the best it could be, like someone already said in this thread, there are certan souls just that work too well together, and ones that are just too narrow and underused. A popular combo was Harbinger and cholormancer, the melee dd, and healer mage souls, can retain fairly high dps, and also be able to heal yourself well, its a great combo for soloing. Instances actually are a bit diffcult as well in the storm legion expansion. Best feature though imo in rift, is how you can switch your role on the fly when not in combat, Boss fight is not melee friendly? switch to a ranged DD for your class, cleric needs a diffrent type of healing? switch souls, since there are 3 diffrent healer souls, and each heals diffrently than the other one.

Bascally Rift's best feature imo is the adaptablilty of the classes, best class in the game IMO is the Cleric, since they can do any role and do it very well. Lets just say with how many roles the cleric can fill, 6-8 spec slots is not enough.

Anyway, yeah, if your looking for a simmlar experence to world of warcraft but also want it to be a bit diffrent, Rift is probally your best bet atm. I didn't bother with raiding though, I find it pointless to raid in these mmorpgs lately, because they don't put in any non-instance raid uses for the gear at all. Was the same for me in wow back in vanallia, didn't see a point to raid due to lack of stuff to use the gear for after you get it. Its like.. why do all that work for gear that really has no more uses cept more of the same raids. I really do not understand why raiders bother with it so much like they do. When its so dead-ended. But thats just my opinion on it. Only game I know of where raiding is actually worth it so far is everquest 2, since they didn't get stupid and seperate pve from pvp. So you can take your raid gear and pvp in it, or work on alternate advancement in it, mentoring down to do dungeons and content that you missed.

Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:

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I tried it, enjoyed the time I played, but couldn't get into it after playing WoW (which it heavily "borrows" from). The combat was just too slow-paced for me and the story wasn't interesting. Once in a while a rift or invasion would pop, making things exciting for a brief moment, but then it was back to "point A point B" questing. I might try it again if I can get someone to play with me, but solo'ing the game was an exercise in frustration.

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In my opinion, Rift's class system stood out quite nicely and the game certainly had polish. Shame that it was lame high fantasy with over-epic tones and no innovation in gameplay mechanics. Then again, the no innovation isn't that bad, I certainly had a blast playing my Bard/ranger mix.

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Compared to WoW not much. The 2H attack animations are very bad in Rift, Dual Wield isn't much better. The combat is fairly bad as well. Everything else about the game is an almost identical port of WoW. If you want to play Rift I would say play something better like WoW.

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Originally posted by ZedTheRockCompared to WoW not much. The 2H attack animations are very bad in Rift, Dual Wield isn't much better. The combat is fairly bad as well. Everything else about the game is an almost identical port of WoW. If you want to play Rift I would say play something better like WoW.

I would disagree with this post. Rift certainly is better for me than WoW, in every possible way, from aesthetics and animations to gameplay related design decisions.

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What made Rift stand out for me rom the rest was having the most depressing story line of all mmorpg's I have ever played. Other things it did well were, let me think, there must be something...It had a lot of potential and it was very polished.

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It's better than wow in every single way but for storyline. Tough luck if you're a RPer. and also worse in terms of handholding, and it is not very carebear friendly (if thats what you are after and therefore still playing wow)

Oh yeah and they have 1/100th of the budget Activision have. (oh sorry i meant Blizzard for those who think it's still the same company)

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The talent system. So much ability to customize and device different builds that makes it quite fun figuring one out.

The raiding is really good, Hammerknell (original Rift raid) is in my opinion one of the best raids I've seen in an MMO. I highly suggest checking it out sometime if you can. Not since WOW TBC have I had a raid impress me like Hammerknell managed to do so.

Combat can be quite fun and challenging, though there are some flaws in it with some speccs being a joke with others being very difficult with the 'reward' being a bit lack luster (same dps if not less often) though its not really something unique to Rift.